The desire to integrate a number of signal processing functions into a single circuit package, utilizing for example VLSI techniques, has fostered the development of multi-purpose processors which can be configured to perform particular processing functions through appropriate commands or control signals.
The PCB 5010 digital signal processor is essentially a computer on a chip designed for processing digital signals and is described in the Philips Technical Review, Vol. 44, No. 1, March 1988, which is incorporated by reference herein. The PCB 5010 operates in response to programmed instruction which select coefficients affecting the nature of the processing taking place within the chip. A CMOS Programmable Video Signal Processor, described at the 1989 I.E.E.E. Solid State Circuits Conference, similarly can be programmed to perform video processing functions such as FIR filtering, interpolation, decimation and matrix vector multiplication. Neither of these devices however can be reprogrammed with different coefficients or otherwise reconfigured as often as every clock cycle. This limits their usefulness in applications where the reconfiguration of the processor must take place rapidly during the processing of the signal.
The object of the present invention is to provide a multi-function digital processing system which can be dynamically reprogrammed to perform a different processing function or implement a different processing characteristic as frequently as every clock cycle.